Allexternal marks of abuse are present on this defiant edifice— all the physical features of

ac-cident—lack of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and hatchet strokes, these things stand out on it; the chasm-side is

dead.Repeated evidence has proved that it can live on what cannot revive its youth. The sea grows old in it.

Our first impression is not content, but form -- the obvious end rhymes, the strict accounting of syllables (1-3-9-6-8), the physical shape of the stanzas on the page. We lose track for a moment of what it is that we are looking at, until we realize that the poem's form evokes the surge and retreat of the tide in the cliff-chasm, the waving rhythm of the sea-creatures in response to the tide, and the sweeping spotlight of the sun flashed by the flowing water into every crevice.

And so the rhythm is impressed upon us, fixed in the brain, the ebb and flow, and we read the poem again, this time with the cadences of ordinary speech, and we see what the poet sees -- the crow-blue mussel shells (crow blue, not black; how exactly seen!), the ink-bespattered jelly fish, the "dynamite" grooves in the rock.

There are two ways of doing science. In one, we begin with a theory, a preconceived notion of what the world should be, and look to see if the world agrees. We nudge our observations into the form, rounding off rough edges perhaps, or hyphenating an observation if necessary, always hoping not to do violence to the integrity of observation. In the second way of doing science, we focus first of all upon the raw data of the senses, observed as precisely as possible, without preconceptions of what it is we are looking for, and trust that out of exactitude meaning will emerge. Both ways of doing science are seldom pure, and each complements the other.

Something analogous is happening with our two poets and two poems. Having decided upon a form, Marianne Moore waves what she sees against the fixed bulwark of the rocky shore, in and out, back and forth, slosh and flow, and the sea grows old in its ancient rhythm, (forgetting the inscrutable last stanza). Ultimately, as the poet would surely have insisted, the form, though prominent -- here almost overwhelming -- is incidental to delight, to that flush of excitement when nature, language and mind chime together.